He stood motionless. His silver cigarette-case dropped from his hand. He looked at it for a second, forgetting to pick it up. A dirty hand suddenly pounced upon it, and a miserable ragged figure flew past him up the street. Hugh stared after it, bewildered, and then looked round. The street was quite empty. He drew a long breath, and something between relief and despair took hold of him.
"Then he does not want to, after all. He has not even followed me. Why was he there? He was waiting for me. What horrible revenge is he planning against me. Is he laying a second trap for me?"
The following night Hugh read in the evening papers that Lord Newhaven had been accidently killed on the line. The revulsion of feeling was too sudden, too overwhelming. He could not bear it. He could not live through it. He flung himself on his face upon the floor, and sobbed as if his heart would break.
The cyclone of passion which had swept Hugh into its vortex spent itself and him, and flung him down at last. How long a time elapsed he never knew between the moment when he, read the news of the accident and the moment when shattered, exhausted, disfigured by emotion, he raised himself to his feet. He opened the window, and the night air laid its cool mother-touch upon his face and hands. The streets were silent. The house was silent. He leaned with closed eyes against the window-post. Time passed by on the other side.
And after a while angels came and ministered to him. Thankfulness came softly, gently, to take his shaking hand in hers. The awful past was over. A false step, a momentary giddiness on the part of his enemy, and the hideous strangling meshes of the past had fallen from him at a touch, as if they had never wrapped him round. Lord Newhaven was gone to return no more. The past went with him. Dead men tell no tales. No one knew of the godless compact between them, and of how he, Hugh, had failed to keep to it, save they two alone. He and one other. And that other was dead—was dead.
Hope came next, shyly, silently, still pale from the embrace of her sister Despair, trimming anew her little lamp, which the laboring breath of Despair had wellnigh blown out. She held the light before Hugh, shading it with her veil, for his eyes were dazed with long gazing into darkness. She turned it faintly upon the future, and he looked where the light fell. And the light grew.
He had a future once more. He had been given that second chance for which he had so yearned. His life was his own once more: not the shamed life in death—worse than death of the last two days—but his own to take up again, to keep, to enjoy, best of all, to use worthily. No horrible constraint was upon him to lay it down, or to live in torment because he still held it. He was free, free to marry Rachel whom he loved, and who loved him. He saw his life with her. Hope smiled, and turned up her light. It was too bright. Hugh hid his face in his hands.
And, last of all, dwarfing Hope, came a divine constraining presence who ever stretches out strong hands to them that fall, who alone sets the stumbling feet upon the upward path. Repentance came to Hugh at last. In all this long time she had not come while he was suffering, while smouldering Remorse had darkened his soul with smoke. But in this quiet hour she came and stood beside him.